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[Bart]

I am unable to get the complete article, can anyone help?

Archaeologists Challenge Link Between Dead Sea Scrolls and Ancient Sect

By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD - NY Times

Published: August 15, 2006

Two archaeologists are raising new doubts about the link between the Dead Sea Scrolls and an ancient settlement known as Qumran.

[Solomon]

This has been a life-long interest of mine, so it's great for me that you raised this here, Bart 

The article you mention is here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/15/science/15scroll.html

But two Israeli archaeologists who have excavated the site on and off for more than 10 years now assert that Qumran had nothing to do with the Essenes or a monastery or the scrolls. It had been a pottery factory.

The archaeologists, Yizhak Magen and Yuval Peleg of the Israel Antiquities Authority, reported in a book and a related magazine article that their extensive excavations turned up pottery kilns, whole vessels, production rejects and thousands of clay fragments. Derelict water reservoirs held thick deposits of fine potters? clay.

Dr. Magen and Dr. Peleg said that, indeed, the elaborate water system at Qumran appeared to be designed to bring the clay-laced water into the site for the purposes of the pottery industry. No other site in the region has been found to have such a water system.

By the time the Romans destroyed Qumran in A.D. 68 in the Jewish revolt, the archaeologists concluded, the settlement had been a center of the pottery industry for at least a century. Before that, the site apparently was an outpost in a chain of fortresses along the Israelites? eastern frontier.

?The association between Qumran, the caves and the scrolls is, thus, a hypothesis lacking any factual archaeological basis,? Dr. Magen said in an article in the current issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

He and Dr. Peleg wrote a more detailed report of their research in ?The Site of the Dead Sea Scrolls: Archaeological Interpretations and Debates,? published this year. The book was edited by Katharina Galor of Brown, Jean-Baptiste Humbert of the French Biblical and Archaeological School of Jerusalem, and J?rgen Zangenberg of the University of Wuppertal in Germany.

This is not the first time that this specific claim has been made. Though interesting in itself, whether or not this interpretation is correct does not necessarily impinge on the scrolls themselves, and the debate on their interpretations. There is one possible, direct link, though:

Yizhak Magen the Israel Antiquities Authority says that the pots used to store the scrolls may have been produced at Qumran.

I think that on this, Magen is probably correct. DNA analysis of the scrolls shows them to consist of skins from local flocks of goat, sheep and ibex. My view of Qumran is that it operated much like a medieval European monastery - a production centre with the objective of fulfilling its own needs, parchment and pottery included. The argument that it may have made pots, if proven, does not conflict with that.

[Bart]

Excellent Solomon, thank you so much for this.  I agree, Qumran could well have been both a pottery 'factory' and a 'monastic scriptoium'. Is there any precedence for a European style monestary in the Middle -East around this time that you are aware of ?

[Solomon]

As in 'Christian'? No: I don't accept the existence of Christianity much before ca 180 CE, by which time Qumran occupation had ended.

As to it being like a monastery, I thought that was my own - liberal - interpretation of the archaeological evidence. However, opening Eisenman's The Dead Sea Scrolls and the First Christians, I see that he describes it thus, also. (BTW I bow to Eisenman in all matters Dead Sea Scrolls.) He writes:

Qumran can almost certainly be considered a training center for the Jerusalem Priesthood. As the "monastery" is probably very near the site where Judas Maccabee and his nine "Zaddikim" hid in "caves" (accepting the testimony of 2 Macc), one cannot resist the admittedly speculative suggestion that it might have been "founded" by John Hyrcanus to commerorate his return to the "Sadducee" Party of his uncle, much as his father had embellished the family's ancestral tombs at Modein before him.

[Bart]

Scroll Origins Debated

By John Noble Wilford THE NEW YORK TIMES

New archaeological evidence is raising more questions about the conventional interpretation linking the desolate ruins of an ancient settlement known as Qumran with the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were found in nearby caves in one of the sensational discoveries of the last century.

After early excavations at the site, on a promontory above the western shore of the Dead Sea, scholars concluded that members of a strict Jewish sect, the Essenes, had lived there in a monastery and presumably wrote the scrolls in the first centuries B.C. and A.D.

Many of the texts describe religious practices and doctrine in ancient Israel.

But two Israeli archaeologists who have excavated the site on and off for more than 10 years now assert that Qumran had nothing to do with the Essenes or a monastery or the scrolls. It had been a pottery factory.

The archaeologists, Yizhak Magen and Yuval Peleg of the Israel Antiquities Authority, reported in a book and a related magazine article that their extensive excavations turned up pottery kilns, whole vessels, production rejects and thousands of clay fragments. Derelict water reservoirs held thick deposits of fine potters? clay.
Magen and Peleg said that, indeed, the elaborate water system at Qumran appeared to be designed to bring the clay-laced water into the site for the purposes of the pottery industry. No other site in the region has been found to have such a water system.

By the time the Romans destroyed Qumran in A.D. 68 in the Jewish revolt, the archaeologists concluded, the settlement had been a center of the pottery industry for at least a century. Before that, the site apparently was an outpost in a chain of fortresses along the Israelites? eastern frontier.

?The association between Qumran, the caves and the scrolls is, thus, a hypothesis lacking any factual archaeological basis,? Magen said in an article in the current issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

He and Peleg wrote a more detailed report of their research in ?The Site of the Dead Sea Scrolls: Archaeological Interpretations and Debates,? published this year. The book was edited by Katharina Galor of Brown, Jean-Baptiste Humbert of the French Biblical and Archaeological School of Jerusalem, and Juergen Zangenberg of the University of Wuppertal in Germany.

This is by no means the first challenge to the Essene hypothesis originally advanced by Roland de Vaux, a French priest and archaeologist who was an early interpreter of the scrolls after their discovery almost 60 years ago. Other scholars have suggested that Qumran was a fortified manor house or a villa, possibly an agricultural community or a commercial entrepot.

Norman Golb, a professor of Near Eastern languages and civilization at the University of Chicago who is a longtime critic of the Essene link, said he was impressed by the new findings and the pottery-factory interpretation.

?Magen?s a very seasoned archaeologist and scholar, and many of his views are cogent,? Golb said in a telephone interview. ?A pottery factory? That could well be the case.?

Golb said that, of course, Qumran could have been both a monastery and a pottery factory. Yet, he added: ?There is not an iota of evidence that it was a monastery. We have come to see it as a secular site, not one of pronounced religious orientation.?

For years, Golb has argued that the multiplicity of Jewish religious ideas and practices recorded in the scrolls made it unlikely that they were the work of a single sect like the Essenes. He noted that few of the texts dealt with specific Essene traditions. Not one, he said, espoused celibacy, which the sect practiced.

The scrolls in the caves were probably written by many different groups, Golb surmised, and were removed from Jerusalem libraries by refugees in the Roman war. Fleeing to the east, the refugees may well have deposited the scrolls for safekeeping in the many caves near Qumran.

The new research appears to support this view. As Magen noted, Qumran in those days was at a major crossroads of traffic to and from Jerusalem and along the Dead Sea. Similar scrolls have been found at Masada, the site south of Qumran of the suicidal hold-out against the Romans.

Magen also cited documents showing that refugees in another revolt against the Romans in the next century had fled to the same caves. He said they were ?the last spot they could hide the scrolls before descending to the shore? of the Dead Sea.

In the magazine article, Magen said the jars in which most of the scrolls were stored had probably come from the pottery factory. If so, this may prove to be the only established connection between the Qumran settlement and the scrolls.

Despite the rising tide of revisionist thinking, other scholars of the Dead Sea scrolls continue to defend the Essene hypothesis, though with some modifications and diminishing conviction.

http://www.telegram.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060828/NEWS/608280335

[Solomon]

I'm sure, Bart, that as time and study progresses, Qumran will generate a continuing debate. Proof is a very rare commodity in archaeology, which is why the language of the archaologist is peppered qualifications such as perhaps, maybe and probably.

Ritual Bath

The Dead Sea Scrolls show us that the Essene's were exclusive and secret; they believed in a kind of Gnosticism: a secret knowledge known only to priveledged insiders. They hated women, were intolerant of children, frowned on marriage, forgave each other but hated their sworn enemies, and practiced rigorous fidelity to infinite refinements of the physical Law.

They were fantical in their ideas of clean and unclean; bathing even before sitting down to meal as a matter of theological ritual. They were afraid even to cook a meal on the sabbath. Yet they fed the poor and helped widows and orphans, wedding the themes of the prophets to the restrictions of the Torah.


ARCHAEOLOGY OF QUMRAN
This picture shows the steps into a Quman mikvah (ritual bath). The steps show earthquake damage.

Josephus describes how the Essenes purified themselves through immersion before participating in their communal meals:

    "Then, after working without interruption until the fifth hour, they reassemble in the same place and, girded with linen loin cloths, bathe themselves thus in cold water. After this purification they assemble in a special building to which no one is admitted who is not of the same faith; they themselves only enter the refectory if they are pure, as though into a holy precinct" (War 2:129).

Could these stepped pools at Qumran have been multifunctional serving water for cisterns and ritual baths?  Jodi Magness writes, "the presence of steps and additional features (such as partitions) indicates that these pools were designed to serve primarily (if not always) as miqva'ot...


Jerusalem?s Essene Gateway
By Bargil Pixner*
Biblical Archaeology Review Volume 23 Number 3 May/June 1997

The resulting frequent foot traffic through the Gate of the Essenes surely explains why its sills were so well worn.

What I have identified as the remains of the Bethso appear in an 1875 diagram of the scarp of Mount Zion by Palestine Exploration Fund archaeologist Claude R. Conder. This drawing shows a platform with two converging sewage channels running parallel to the rock scarp. A military man, Captain Conder suggested that the platform might have been a horse stable that served as a hiding place from which city defenders could ambush enemy attackers. Today, a terrace is built over the platform and only the eastern corner remains visible.

The discovery of several miqva'ot (singular, miqveh [ritual baths) just outside the gate further supports the identification of this area as an Essene quarter. As I mentioned earlier, while digging near the gate we discovered some of the tunnels Bliss dug a hundred years ago. A few remained intact, among them one leading along the sewage channel. Carefully creeping through it at a depth of some 30 feet, I noticed several smaller feeder channels descending from the north. These suggested that the channel passing through the Essene Gate collected refuse water coming from throughout the quarter.

Working in that direction we found a double miqveh about 160 feet from the gate. Originally discovered more than a hundred years ago by Claude Conder, these miqva'ot were just outside the ancient city wall and were situated on top of a rock shelf from which one could descend 36 steps to a garden level with the Gate of the Essenes.21 One of the two baths had a divider between the steps of descent and the steps of ascent, as also appears in the Qumran miqva'ot. Presumably, the steps of ascent were for the purified bather to emerge without recontamination.

[Solomon]

October 4
Mysteries of the Dead Sea Scrolls

Scott Noegel
Professor of Biblical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Department of Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations,
University of Washington
Adjunct Department of History

Dead Sea Scroll Distinguished Lecture Series

Pacific Science Center is pleased to present eleven lectures in conjunction with the Discovering the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibition. A broad range of topics, from the archaeology of the Dead Sea scrolls to the Dead Sea scrolls and the Da Vinci Code will be featured. Some of the world's foremost experts and authors on the scrolls will be participating.

All lectures will take place at Town Hall
Town Hall is located in Seattle at Eighth Avenue and Seneca Street
All lectures begin at 7:30pm.
There is an additional noon lecture on October 18

Tickets are $15 per lecture.
On sale beginning May 8th on-line through www.pacificsciencecenter.org
or on the day of the event at Town Hall.

[Solomon]

Martin Abegg
Professor and Director of the Dea Sea Scrolls Institute; Chair, Religious Studies, Director MABS, Trinity Western University, Langley, BC, Canada

Dead Sea Scroll Distinguished Lecture Series

Pacific Science Center is pleased to present eleven lectures in conjunction with the Discovering the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibition. A broad range of topics, from the archaeology of the Dead Sea scrolls to the Dead Sea scrolls and the Da Vinci Code will be featured. Some of the world's foremost experts and authors on the scrolls will be participating.
   

All lectures will take place at Town Hall
Town Hall is located in Seattle at Eighth Avenue and Seneca Street
All lectures begin at 7:30pm.
There is an additional noon lecture on October 18

Tickets are $15 per lecture.
On sale beginning May 8th on-line through www.pacificsciencecenter.org
or on the day of the event at Town Hall.

[Solomon]

Peter Flint
Professor of Biblical Studies, Trinity Western University, Langley, BC, Canada:
Director Dead Sea Scrolls Institute Langley BC

Dead Sea Scroll Distinguished Lecture Series

Pacific Science Center is pleased to present eleven lectures in conjunction with the Discovering the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibition. A broad range of topics, from the archaeology of the Dead Sea scrolls to the Dead Sea scrolls and the Da Vinci Code will be featured. Some of the world's foremost experts and authors on the scrolls will be participating.
   

All lectures will take place at Town Hall
Town Hall is located in Seattle at Eighth Avenue and Seneca Street
All lectures begin at 7:30pm.
There is an additional noon lecture on October 18

Tickets are $15 per lecture.
On sale beginning May 8th on-line through www.pacificsciencecenter.org
or on the day of the event at Town Hall.

[Solomon]

Donald W. Parry
Professor of Hebrew Bible and Dead Sea Scrolls Brigham Young University

Dead Sea Scroll Distinguished Lecture Series

Pacific Science Center is pleased to present eleven lectures in conjunction with the Discovering the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibition. A broad range of topics, from the archaeology of the Dead Sea scrolls to the Dead Sea scrolls and the Da Vinci Code will be featured. Some of the world's foremost experts and authors on the scrolls will be participating.
   

All lectures will take place at Town Hall
Town Hall is located in Seattle at Eighth Avenue and Seneca Street
All lectures begin at 7:30pm.
There is an additional noon lecture on October 18

Tickets are $15 per lecture.
On sale beginning May 8th on-line through www.pacificsciencecenter.org
or on the day of the event at Town Hall.

[Solomon]

Scott Woodward, PhD
Director of the Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation

Dead Sea Scroll Distinguished Lecture Series

Pacific Science Center is pleased to present eleven lectures in conjunction with the Discovering the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibition. A broad range of topics, from the archaeology of the Dead Sea scrolls to the Dead Sea scrolls and the Da Vinci Code will be featured. Some of the world's foremost experts and authors on the scrolls will be participating.
   

All lectures will take place at Town Hall
Town Hall is located in Seattle at Eighth Avenue and Seneca Street
All lectures begin at 7:30pm.
There is an additional noon lecture on October 18

Tickets are $15 per lecture.
On sale beginning May 8th on-line through www.pacificsciencecenter.org
or on the day of the event at Town Hall.

[Bart]

Right off, I wonder what impact, if any, this might have on the Copper Teasure Scroll - Bart

The Chinese Connection
New discoveries from Asia suggest the Dead Sea Scrolls may not be as old as we think

4 Nov 2006. 01:00 AM
NEIL ALTMAN - SPECIAL TO THE STAR

The Dead Sea Scrolls have been guarded for 60 years like crown jewels, the possessions of a scholarly elite who were challenged only in the past decade to bring the scrolls to the public. Now, there is accumulating and compelling evidence that these supposedly ancient texts are medieval at best and have a connection with China.

That connection is raising questions about the manuscripts' true dating, origin and possible authenticity.

The scrolls were first discovered in a cave in Jordan's Qumran region near the Dead Sea in 1947. By 1956, archaeologists and Arab treasure hunters found 10 more caves at Qumran that held mostly fragments of some 800 manuscripts, commonly thought to have been written between 200 BC and AD 25.

Soon after the scrolls' discovery, a scholarly debate broke out over whether the writings were indeed pre-Christian, with many respected scholars arguing that the texts were much more recent.

Today, a growing number of scholars doubt the Dead Sea Scrolls were produced by a Jewish sect at Qumran but think they actually originated elsewhere. No one, however, has pointed to Asia, where new information has turned up, including a possibly new scroll called the Moshe Leah Scroll from China.

In 1991, I wrote articles for the Washington Post and Boston Herald about the idea that a number of previously undeciphered markings in the margins of two Dead Sea Scrolls were Chinese. Victor Mair, graduate chairman of Chinese at the University of Pennsylvania, wrote that the Chinese character ti, which was found on the Dead Sea Scrolls, meant "god, divine king, deceased king, emperor."

Word of Chinese characters in the scrolls triggered an interesting chain of events.

Early in 1992, Leo Gabow, then president of the Sino-Judaic Institute in California, sent me an August 1987 copy of his institute's journal, Points East, by which I came to know of Moshe Leah.

In the journal, Gabow wrote: "In July of 1983, a curious article appeared in the Israeli newspaper Maariv ... `A Jew Looking for Correspondents.' His name is Moshe Leah. He is 35 years old. ... His occupation: clerk in a printing company. He lives in Taiwan. ..."

Leah told Gabow his mother had told him that their ancestors "came to China from a land where they were deported to by their enemy. And a King of Babylon defeated our enemy ... and allowed Jews to return to Israel (516 BC), but our ancestor ... came to the Orient for the deal of tea and ivory with the tribes of Hsiung-nu (who dominated Central Asia at the time)."

Gabow also said that Leah "mentioned that his mother previously owned two ancient Hebrew scrolls that had been destroyed by a leaky roof. One scroll dealt with `Moshe's Law of the Book of Geshayeher,' possibly Isaiah, and the other scroll exalted human `virtues' in Chinese style (in Hebrew script)."

During the course of their correspondence, Gabow received two photos of Leah looking at the scrolls. The first photo was "of poor quality and the letters ... difficult to identify even with a magnifying glass. Photo number two (shown left) however, had considerably more clarity," Gabow wrote in the Points East article. Speculation immediately arose as to whether the language of the scroll in the photo could be Judeo-Persian or Judeo-Chinese or even Aramaic, Gabow wrote.

Through the years, Gabow contacted other scholars connected with the Sino-Judaic Institute to help unravel the mystery of the Moshe Leah Scroll. According to Gabow's article in Points East, Michael Pollak, vice-president of the Sino-Judaic Institute and a leading expert on Chinese Jewry, was the first to make a breakthrough.

"This I am sure of," Pollak wrote in a report cited by Gabow: "The lettering is Hebrew and is in Chinese calligraphic style. Especially the long, giraffe-like lamed."

Besides finding Aramaic words mixed with the Hebrew on the Moshe Leah Scroll, Rabbi Nathan Bernstein of La Habra, Calif., was also the first to think that the section of the scroll shown in the second Leah photo was from the Book of Isaiah, and other paleographers identified the text as Isaiah 38:8-40.

But interestingly, the Qumran Isaiah Scroll has no Aramaic in those chapters, indicating that the Moshe Leah Scroll was not a copy of a Qumran scroll.

Rabbi Emanual Silver, curator of the Hebrew section of the British Library, department of Oriental Manuscripts, saw the similarities, and Gabow says Silver wrote, "Anybody slightly acquainted with the Dead Sea Scrolls will notice at a glance the overall similarity of the hand that wrote the Moshe Leah Scrolls to that of certain documents of the Dead Sea caves, and anyone a little familiar with the Dead Sea texts will be struck by the resemblances in orthography."

Gabow wrote, "For the first time the Moshe Leah `Isaiah Scroll' is associated with Dead Sea texts" because of the similar style of writing.

Gabow later sent me the photos of Leah holding the scrolls.

Gabow also sent me texts in Hebrew from China. In one, known as the Genesis Manuscript (1489-1679) from the Kaifeng Synagogue, the mems (Hebrew "m") were also like those in the Dead Sea's Isaiah Scroll and the Moshe Leah Scroll.

More important, Gabow enclosed a copy of the Khotan text, a business letter written on paper that came from Chinese Central Asia and had been dated from the 8th century. It had numerous Hebrew letters matching those in Dead Sea texts: the unique wishbone-shape gimels, diamond-shaped kophs, S-shaped nuns, giraffe-neck lameds and mems.

If the Dead Sea Scrolls were written before Christ's time and then buried in caves until the 20th century, how could the same script show up in China in the 8th century ? or even later?

These paleographic details provide some solid evidence about the age of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Dating them not in antiquity but in the Middle Ages, at the earliest, explains the connection to medieval texts, as well as unusual things like the Chinese symbol for God in the Isaiah Scroll. University of Pennsylvania's Mair dated this character, which also appears in The Order of the Community, another Dead Sea Scroll, no earlier than AD 100 and perhaps 700 years or more later.

Donald Daniel Leslie, an Australian sinologist and leading expert in Kaifeng Jewry, agreed with Mair's dating and wrote in Points East that it's unlikely the Jews and the Chinese knew much, if anything, about each other before the time of Jesus. Leslie wrote that "there is no hint in Western sources of any knowledge of the Chinese language or writing until perhaps a thousand years later."

In later scholarly reports, Bruce Brooks, research professor of Chinese and director of an international group of sinologists at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, confirmed Mair's findings and other possible Chinese characters on some of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

These Chinese connections, especially the symbol for God dating after Christ, and the fact that the characters are native to the Chinese Central Asian area, begin to explain the time frame of the Dead Sea Scrolls and their possible place of origin. Mair identified Chinese Central Asia as the area from which the Chinese symbol for God in the scrolls came.

When a text such as the Moshe Leah scroll shows up in China, the Asian connection with the Dead Sea Scrolls is no longer strange.

This new scroll would have perhaps come to light sooner had Gabow accepted Pollak's assessment that "it would be wiser to conclude that the Moshe Leah scrolls were very old family heirlooms."

Pollak's article on the Moshe Leah Scroll, in a January 1987 addendum in Points East, called for a reassessment of the writing and spelling styles of surviving medieval Hebrew manuscripts from Kaifeng. His conclusion is that "the possibility of a Dead Sea tie-in to these texts seems never to have been suspected in the past. That possibility ... now demands investigation."

Scholars still disagree about the age of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and research remains to be done, but all the scholars I have contacted have come to the same conclusion, that the Moshe Leah Scroll is not a forgery, nor is it based on Polish scholar Josef Milik's copies of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

It would be in the best interest of the scholars who believe in the antiquity of the Dead Sea Scrolls to discredit the Moshe Leah Scroll because of its striking paleographic similarities to the Dead Sea Scrolls.

If those scholars acknowledge it as authentic, however, the obvious conclusion would be that the Dead Sea Scrolls would have to be dated in the medieval era ? after A.D. 500 ? at the earliest, and the myth of the Dead Sea Scrolls' antiquity will have run its course.

Neil Altman is a Philadelphia-based writer who specializes in the Dead Sea Scrolls.

See also:
DNA and the Dead Sea Scrolls
https://historyhuntersinternational.org/index.php?topic=355.0

Using Technology to Reveal and Safeguard the Dead Sea Scrolls
https://historyhuntersinternational.org/index.php?topic=354.0

The Dead Sea Scrolls, Jesus & The Da Vinci Code
https://historyhuntersinternational.org/index.php?topic=353.0

[Solomon]

I don't believe any of that, Bart. It doesn't relate to anything I know of the matter.
Anything biblical attracts cranks, frauds, hoaxers and forgers.
Solomon

BTW those links do not work.

Code:

[url=http://paste-url-here]paste-text-here[/url]

So that, for example:

Code:

[url=https://historyhuntersinternational.org/?page=63]Meet the Crew![/url]

Gives you this:
Meet the Crew!

[Bart]

It does have many scam elements. The unverifiable claim of ancient scrolls (conveniently) destroyed by a leaking roof, oral tradition/ hearsay, photos of something purported to be ancient scrolls, and many assumptions based upon those elements. One would think there was something left of these scrolls to examine. I had never heard of Chinese characters as marginal notations in the Qumran scrolls before. It seems one must track down and verify every detail in these kinds of stories before being able to accept them. That can be frustrating. Time will see how this oddity plays out I suppose.

- Bart

Thanks for the code, I'll have to fix those.

[Solomon]

This evidence supports the view that the scrolls - or at least a large and important part of them - were authored by the Essenes.

The hidden latrines of the Essenes
By Ran Shapira

In one of his detailed accounts of the Essenes, Flavius Josephus (Yosef Ben Matityahu), described one of the many laws that shaped the Jewish sect's way of life during the Second Temple period. While the Essenes sat in a circle, Josephus wrote, it was forbidden for them to spit into its center. Like many other laws outlined by Josephus, the details of this law appear in the Dead Sea Scrolls found in caves along the northern end of the Dead Sea. These scrolls are attributed to the Essenes.

The resemblance between the 1st century historian's testimony and the content of the Dead Sea Scrolls does not end with the law forbidding spitting into the center of a circle. Magen Broshi, former curator of the Shrine of the Book at the Israel Archaeological Museum in Jerusalem, where the Qumran scrolls are housed, says there are dozens of parallels between Josephus' writing and the content of the scrolls. One of the main similarities regards purification rituals and the Essenes' meticulous hygiene.

Anthropologist Joe Zias, of the Hebrew University Science and Archaeology Department, recently found positive evidence of the Essenes' adherence to these rituals. Together with Dr. James Tabor, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina and parasitologist Stephanie Harter-Lailheugue of the CNRS Laboratory for Anthropology in Marseilles, France, Zias found the latrines that were used by the Essenes in Qumran. The three researchers say that, in addition to shedding a great deal of light on the unique culture of the Essenes in Qumran, the discovery represents an archaeological bonanza: Additional proof that the Essenes wrote the scrolls. Zias explains that when feces are left on the desert floor, exposure to sun and wind quickly annihilates intestinal parasites. But when feces are buried in the earth, intestinal parasites may survive for many months and their eggs may be preserved for as long as 2,000 years, as in the case of Qumran.

Close attention to hygiene
The presence of the eggs of intestinal parasites, typically present in human intestines, in a relatively limited area, in the place described in the scrolls and by Josephus, led researchers to conclude that they discovered the bathroom of Qumran's ancient residents. "Only ascetic members of a sect that paid such close attention to hygiene would bother to walk hundreds of meters beyond their camp to relieve themselves, and invest the necessary energy to dig a pit in which to bury their waste," Zias concludes.

However, Dr. Yitzhak Magen, staff officer of archaeology in the Civil Administration of the West Bank, was not impressed by the new discovery. Last summer, Magen and his colleague, Yuval Peleg, published findings based on 10 years of excavation in the Qumran ruins. Both researchers reached the conclusion that Qumran was not a monastery but an enormous ceramics factory. They found fragments of clay artifacts at the site and many pools, which they believe were used to submerge the sediment that surfaces, to this day, when local rivers overflow to produce tremendous, winter floods. Magen maintains that this sediment provides excellent raw material for pottery production. According to Magen and Peleg, the pools were not ritual baths; nor were they used by the Essenes, who immersed themselves in ritual baths twice a day. "In addition," Magen says, "the Qumran area and particularly the caves surrounding the site, are full of predatory animals and animals that consume carrion, like foxes, hyenas, and leopards. People who lived in this area for years were well aware of that. They feared these animals and certainly would not leave their camps to relieve themselves. Thus, it is unreasonable to assume that the camp's latrine was located at such a distance."

"It was not the Essenes who buried the scrolls in the caves near the Qumran ruins," Magen adds. "The scrolls were buried by Jews who escaped from Jerusalem after the destruction of the Second Temple." One of the main escape routes from Jerusalem passed through Qumran. Jews, who were somewhat unfamiliar with the area and had no knowledge of its predatory animals, did not fear entering the caves to bury the scrolls, he proposes.

According to Magen, one finds ample evidence of this in the scrolls, themselves, as they are written in a broad variety of styles and they cover a great deal of content. "It is not possible to say that one man or one sect wrote all the scrolls," Magen says. It is more reasonable to conclude that they reflect the enormous diversity that typified Judaism during the end of the Second Temple period.

Magen's theory is the most recent in a series of conclusions that question the authorship of the Dead Sea Scrolls by Essenes. Since the first scrolls were found, in 1947, a number of suggestions regarding the identity of the authors of these scrolls arose, leading to occasional outbursts of angry discourse, fraught with thinly-veiled agendas. But the most solid conclusion, raised in the early days of Professor Eliezer Sukenik, who purchased the scrolls, was and remains that the Essenes wrote the scrolls.

"The best proof of that," Broshi says, "is evident in the 900 scrolls discovered in Qumran." Some of them describe a group of ascetic hermits, and the details match information provided by Flavius Josephus. "There are dozens of parallels between Yosef Ben Matityahu [Flavius Josephus] and the Dead Sea Scrolls." Broshi says that the conclusion that there were potters, rather than ascetics, in Qumran is unfounded.

Ascetics, not potters
According to Broshi, Qumran lacks the raw materials suitable to the production of ceramic pottery. Investigations conducted a few years ago, by Broshi and Professor Hanan Eshel of Bar-Ilan University, reveal that clay pots and other ceramic vessels found in Qumran were made with metamorphic rock that came from the hills surrounding Jerusalem.

In addition to that, clay pots must be fired in kilns, at temperatures of 800-900 degrees Celsius, and the Qumran area lacks raw material to produce energy of that magnitude.

"It is possible that the residents produced ceramic vessels," Broshi says, "but only for their own personal use - not as a source of income."

"Discovery of latrines neither proves nor disproves," Broshi comments.

It merely provides another piece in the larger puzzle, which, after 60 long years of research, few scholars still question.

"I do not know a single, serious researcher that maintains that Qumran was not inhabited by Essenes and that they did not write the scrolls."

[Bart]

It just doesn't seem all that reasonable to have to walk nearly half a mile for the daily constitutional. The time involved is probably 15 minutes at a minimum, and what provision is made for illness according to historic record? I would presume other arrangements were made for the more frequent daily bladder relief, but I don't recall that ever being mentioned specifically.

Was this the only location tested? Perhaps there is another reason entirely that this are contained the apparent residue. Some possibilities come to mind, such as an outdoor classroom nearby. Sixty years is a long time to have progressed so (seemingly) little in the big picture here.

- Bart

[Bart]

As I suspected, a toilet inside the 'compound' is now mentioned.

 - Bart

Ancient latrine fuels debate at Qumran

By MATTI FRIEDMAN, Associated Press Writer

Tue 2 Jan 2007,

QUMRAN, West Bank -

     Researchers say their discovery of a 2,000-year-old toilet at one of the world's most important archaeological sites sheds new light on whether the ancient Essene community was home to the authors of many of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

     In a new study, three researchers say they have discovered the outdoor latrine used by the ancient residents of Qumran, on the barren banks of the Dead Sea. They say the find proves the people living here two millennia ago were Essenes, an ascetic Jewish sect that left Jerusalem to seek proximity to God in the desert. (No, it doesn't prove they were Essenes, it proves people used this area as a latrine. - Bart)

     Qumran and its environs have already yielded many treasures: the remains of a settlement with an aqueduct and ritual baths, ancient sandals and pottery, and the Dead Sea Scrolls ? perhaps the greatest archaeological find of the 20th century.

     The scrolls, which include fragments of the books of the Old Testament and treatises on communal living and apocalyptic war, have shed important light on Judaism and the origins of Christianity.

     Thanks to an Israeli anthropologist, an American textual scholar and a French paleo-parasitologist, researchers can now add another find: human excrement.

     The discovery is more significant than it may seem. The nature of the settlement at Qumran is the subject of a lively academic debate.

     The traditional view, supported by a majority of scholars since the site was first excavated in the 1950s, is that the settlement was inhabited by Essene monks who observed strict rules of ritual purity and celibacy and who wrote many of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

     The second school says the people living at Qumran were farmers, potters or soldiers, and had nothing to do with the Essenes. The scrolls, according to this view, were written in Jerusalem and stashed in caves at Qumran by Jewish refugees fleeing the Roman conquest of the city in the first century.

     The researchers behind the latrine finding, which is being published in the scholarly journal "Revue de Qumran," say it supports the traditional view linking the residents of Qumran with the Essenes.

     A description of Essene practice by the Jewish historian Josephus Flavius in the first century notes that Essene rules required them to distance themselves from inhabited areas to defecate and "dig a trench a foot deep" which was to then be covered with soil.

     Joe Zias, a Jerusalem-based anthropologist, and James Tabor, a Dead Sea Scrolls expert from the University of North Carolina, decided to look for the Qumran latrine. If it was far from the settlement ruins and if the excrement was buried, it would offer evidence the people living at the site were Essenes.

     Zias and Tabor identified an area behind a rock outcropping, took soil samples and sent them to Stephanie Harter-Lailheugue, a French scientist specializing in ancient parasites. The samples tested positive for pinworms and two other intestinal parasites found only in human feces. Samples from locations nearer the settlement tested negative.

     The excrement traces were found underground ? meaning the feces had been buried, as required by Essene law ? a nine-minute walk uphill from the settlement.

     "A lot of people were concerned with what went into the body, but the Essenes were perhaps the only group in antiquity concerned with what came out," Zias said. "No one else would have gone to the trouble of walking this far."

     Still, there is no way to date the fecal parasites, which could have been left by Bedouin who are known to have inhabited the area. To counter this, the paper quotes a Bedouin scholar as saying the nomadic tribespeople do not bury their feces.

     Another problem is that archaeologists have already identified a toilet at Qumran ? inside the settlement. But Zias believes it was for emergencies: In some cases, divine commandments notwithstanding, nine minutes outside the camp was too far to go.

     Norman Golb, a history professor at the University of Chicago and a critic of the link between Qumran and the Essenes, called the new paper "an outrageous claim."

     "There's no plausible connection between what they found and the conclusion that the Essenes lived at Qumran," Golb said. "Anyone living at the site would have done the same."

     Golb maintains that Qumran's residents had nothing to do with the Essenes or the Dead Sea Scrolls. Those who claim a connection do so because "they're committed in their writings to it," Golb said.

     Dead Sea Scrolls scholar Stephen Pfann, of the University of the Holy Land in Jerusalem, said questions about the parasites' age have to be cleared up, but the find is potentially significant.

     Qumran, he says, could have been inhabited at different times by different groups: first by Jews of the Hasmonean dynasty in the second century, then by a monastic group of Essenes who left after an earthquake and were replaced by a lay group of Essene date farmers, then again by Essene ascetics, before being finally taken over by Jewish rebels fighting the Roman legions and abandoned when Judea fell.

     "Qumran isn't one thing, it's many things," Pfann said. "This makes it more exciting, but also more complicated to understand."

[Solomon]

What was an Essene? And on what sources could one base an honest answer? Josephus? Roman Christians of later centuries, claiming to be reporting hearsay? Maybe we could just call them the religious arm of the sicarii, the Zealots.

The scrolls, which include fragments of the books of the Old Testament and treatises on communal living and apocalyptic war...

This is a classic: how to use facts to tell a lie. Or, 'the sins of omission can be greater than those of commission'.

For the decades in which the ?cole Biblique (the Dominicans of the Inquisition) controlled access to the scrolls, the thrust of their collective arguments was that they were written prior to the times referred to in the NT, i.e. the birth of so-called Christianity. It was to hide the untruth of this spurious claim that they needed control of their translation and interpretation.

Yes, there are scrolls of the OT, but some are definitely of the period immediately prior to and maybe of the First Jewish Revolt. It is this that makes them so profoundly important: some of the scrolls are contemporary to, by and about NT characters. Unlike those of the NT, most of which are works of fiction, they have not been tampered with - they come to us direct.

Dead Sea Scrolls scholar Stephen Pfann, of the University of the Holy Land in Jerusalem...     Qumran, he says, could have been inhabited at different times by different groups: first by Jews of the Hasmonean dynasty in the second century, then by a monastic group of Essenes who left after an earthquake and were replaced by a lay group of Essene date farmers, then again by Essene ascetics, before being finally taken over by Jewish rebels fighting the Roman legions and abandoned when Judea fell.

Or, maybe these are all the same? Hasmonean to Zealot - those zealous for the Law and therefore against foreigners who 'pollute the Temple': the Kittim, whether Greek, Seleucid, Roman, or Herodian.

Solomon

[Sovereign]

God's Dogs
The methods employed by his order were not so gentle. They included torture and execution, usually by burning. Although instructions for interrogation limiting the use of torture were issued, the tendency was to exceed them. Many Dominicans never participated in the Inquisition. Others were mild in their measures. Some resigned rather than continue the brutal work. Nonetheless the good name of the Dominicans was forever stained by their participation in this cruel activity. Before long the order became popularly known as Domini canes, Latin for "God's dogs."

Inquisition
Later in the thirteenth century (Papal inquisition), the pope assigned the Dominican Order for the duty of inquisitors. Since then Inquisitors were few (always less than 10), acting by the name of the Pope with full authority. They judged heresy alone, using local authorities to put a tribunal and persecute heretics. Since the end of the fifteenth century(Spanish Inquisition) they were ruled by a Grand Inquisitor. Inquisitors persisted through time until the nineteenth century.

Roman Inquisition
Pope Paul III established, in 1542, a permanent congregation staffed with cardinals and other officials, whose task was to maintain and defend the integrity of the faith and to examine and proscribe errors and false doctrines. This body, the Congregation of the Holy Office, now called the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, part of the Roman Curia, became the supervisory body of local Inquisitions. The Pope appoints one of the cardinals to preside over the meetings. There are usually ten other cardinals on the Congregation, as well as a prelate and two assistants all chosen from the Dominican Order.

[Solomon]

Dead Sea Scrolls scholar Stephen Pfann, of the University of the Holy Land in Jerusalem

University of the Holy Land. Hmm. That raises my eyebrows.

I have found many references to this institution, but no website.


Nice pic. She looks suitably inspired.

Another View of the Nativity
CBN News
December 22, 2006

CBNNews.com - As the world prepares to celebrate Christmas, we want to show you a unique perspective on the Nativity.

Claire Fawn, co-founder of the University of the Holy Land in Jerusalem, and an expert in early Christianity, portrays Mary as an older woman reflecting on her life.

Fawn becomes the storyteller, while film clips of a younger Mary dramatize the story of the Nativity.

The video shows Mary growing up and discovering God's plan for her, the amazing events of the annunciation, the birth of Jesus, and His destiny to become the Lamb of God.

She is not, of course, as described: an expert in early Christianity, though she is probably expert in what is taught by orthodox Christians as early Christianity. Who is? They are a rare breed.

Looks to me as though these people are part of the gang that lends an aura of academic verisimilitude to the 'early Christian' story, so the rest of us can ignore the evidence and continue to have faith. We have them in Britain, too, where otherwise reputable hacks, and trendy-looking priests (with the Indiana Jones hat) stare us in the eye, on television, to assure us that the NT is reliable, proven history, and the NT Jesus an historical character.

Almost 2,000 years of crud served up by pretentious, self-serving creeps and liars is enough.

Solomon

[Bart]

For the most part Sol, I must agree with you, the damage they have done and continue to do is incaculable. The only part I am unfamiliar with is the Chinese spare parts aspect. A 108 acre country that wields more power than most all others combined is ...____ fill in the blank with as many adjectives as you desire. Henry VIII threw them on of England, but I don't recall off-hand who let them back in.

-Bart

[Solomon]

I was being somewhat gross, Bart, and have removed that sentence. They get my blood up sometimes. The personal attacks made on Eisenman were so gross that sometimes I am tempted to respond in kind.

In the UK, the church is an integral part of state, which is not the case in the USA. Clergy have shaped our laws for centuries. The Vatican still plays its secret games for power. Blair slips out of No. 10 at night to visit Westminster Cathedral and is likely to change his religion formally once he has left office this year; I see his foreign policy - in particular his attitude to the death of others - as shaped by his secretive religious views.

Monarchy is validated by the church, with a quid pro quo that shaped European history for many centuries, usually for the worse.

Solomon

[Solomon]

Indications that the "Brother of Jesus" Inscription is a Forgery
There can be no doubt that the 21 inch long carved limestone container is an authentic first century C.E. ossuary (bone box) which originated in the Jerusalem area. Nor can there be any doubt concerning the authenticity of the eleven letter Aramaic inscription on one of its broad sides reading Yakov bar Yosef? in English "Yakov son of Yosef."
- Jeffrey R. Chadwick, Ph.D.


My interpretation is this is the ossuary of James, the Just in which his bones were placed 1 year after his execution in 62 CE. Having studied perhaps 80% of all 1st century ossuarial inscriptions, it is the only one where a sibling is used as an identifier along with the father. This would only be done because the brother had some sort of prominence.
- Jack Kilmon, historian


Searching for historicity within the New Testament is like searching for the proverbial needle. One character who does appear to be genuine is James 'the Just' and the ossuary with the now-infamous forged additional name is, almost certainly, his burial box.

I have started this thread so that we may discuss James, his beliefs, his life and the impact he had then and since.

Solomon

[Solomon]

Robert Eiseman's JAMES THE BROTHER OF JESUS: A Higher-Critical Evaluation
Robert M. Price
Drew University

Robert Eisenman, James the Brother of Jesus: The Key to Unlocking the Secrets of Early Christianity and the Dead Sea Scrolls. Viking Penguin, 1997, xxxvi + 1074 pp., $39.95. ISBN 0-670-86932-5.

Extracts:

1. To anticipate the thrust of the book as a whole, let it be said that Eisenman first draws a portrait of the early community of James as a nationalistic, messianic, priestly, and xenophobic sect of ultra-legal pietism, something most of us would deem fanaticism.

2. As Hans-Joachim Schoeps had already surmised, the stoning of Stephen has in precisely the same way supplanted the stoning of James (actually a conflation of James' ultimate stoning at the command of Ananus and an earlier assault by Saul on the temple steps preserved as a separate incident in the Recognitions). The name Stephen has been borrowed from a Roman official beaten by Jewish insurgents whom Josephus depicts ambushing him outside the city walls. Why this name? Because of a pun: Stephen means "crown" and was suggested both by the "crown" of long hair worn by the Nazirite (which James was, according to early church writers) and by the crown of martyrdom. To Stephen has been transferred James' declaration of the Son of Man at the right hand of God in heaven, as well as James' "Christlike" prayer for his persecutors. (Eisenman might have noted, too, that the martyr's original identity as James the Just is signaled by Acts 7:52, "the Just, whose betrayers and murderers you have now become"!)

We read that a young man named Saul was playing coat checker for the executioners of Stephen and, his taste for blood whetted, immediately began to foment persecution in Jerusalem and Damascus. This has been drawn, again, from the lore of James as well as Josephus. The clothing motif was suggested by the final blow to James' head with a fuller's club, while just after his own account of James' death, Josephus tells of the rioting started by a Herodian named Saulus in Jerusalem!

Eisenman sees various Jamesian themes floating around to link up in entirely different forms elsewhere in Christian scripture. For instance, the Transfiguration has Jesus glimpsed in heavenly glory as Stephen saw him and James proclaimed him. And of course "James" is there on the scene. The "fuller" element is repeated in the form of Jesus' shining clothes, whiter than any fuller on earth could have bleached them. Again, in the Recognitions, Saul is pursuing James and the Jerusalem saints out to Jericho (the vicinity of the Qumran "Damascus"), and somehow they are protected by the spectacle of two martyrs' tombs which miraculously whiten every year. There is the whitening element linked with Saul's persecution. Again, at the empty tomb (recalling those martyrs' tombs), we meet a "young man" (the epithet applied to Saul in Acts' stoning of Stephen) who is dressed in white (the fuller motif) and sitting at the right, this time, of Jesus' resting place (just as Stephen saw Jesus at the right hand of God).

3. James had been executed for blasphemy on account of his functioning (as early church writers tell us) as an opposition High Priest entering the Inner Sanctum on the Day of Atonement. As an Essene (as shown by his ascetic practices, his linen dress, etc.) he would have celebrated Yom Kippur on a different day, which is how he could not collide with Ananus doing the same thing, and why he would have been executed for ritual irregularity as the Mishnah required for such an infraction.

As Eisenman describes the role of James, it has very little to do with Jesus (about as little as the Epistle of James does, come to think of it!). Even the famous story of James being invited by the High Priest to address the people at Passover, to dissuade them from their growing faith in Jesus, issuing in his surprise confession, "Why do you ask me concerning the Son of Man...?" might be read, Eisenman seems to imply, as a Christianization of an original in which James was asked to quell the messianic excitement of the Passover crowds (a yearly source of eschatological headaches for the Temple and Roman establishments), with no reference to Jesus as the expected messiah. And James' answer would have been an incitement of messianic expectation, again with no reference to Jesus as the Son of Man. Similarly, the vow of James neither to eat nor to drink till the Son of Man should have risen from them that sleep might be a Christian redaction of James' vow to observe Nazirite asceticism till the coming of the messiah, not necessarily the resurrection of Jesus. So Eisenman's James would pretty much make sense as a major religious figure in his own right, not standing in the shadow of Jesus. This is the impression we gain from Hegesippus and others anyway: how could the Temple authorities ever have asked James to quell the popular enthusiasm over Jesus if they knew he himself was a Christian leader? And if he was a prominent Christian leader how could they not have known it? They knew him as a pious Jew, as did Josephus.

This picture of James as important in his own right comports with two other distinctive hypotheses of Eisenman. The first is his identification of James the Just as the Qumran Teacher of Righteousness, a case he argues at length in his earlier books now happily reprinted in the collection The Dead Sea Scrolls and the First Christians. He alludes to the possibility of this identification several times in James the Brother of Jesus, but the argument here is in no way dependent upon it, and he has reserved a systematic treatment for the forthcoming second volume. Of course, even on Eisenman's reading of the Dead Sea texts, little is said about Jesus. His reading of the sources on James makes sense of this. Jesus would not have occupied a Christological centrality in the original context of an "Essenism" which eventually fragmented along the lines of factional loyalties to Jesus (Ebionite Christianity), John the Baptist (the Mandaean sect), and James the Just (the Qumran sect). For a similar scenario on Gentile soil see 1 Cor 1:12.

4. First, since Judas Thomas/Thaddaeus is also called "Lebbaeus," an apparent variant of James' title "Oblias" (the Bulwark = the Pillar), we must suppose that the Heirs of Jesus and the Pillars were synonymous, which in turn makes the Pillar John a brother of Jesus. (Eisenman supposes there must have been a Pillar named John; it is his connection with the cipher "James son of Zebedee" that presents the difficulty.) Thus there is no problem accepting the Pillar John as the real brother of James the Just and of Judas Thomas and Simeon bar Cleophas. All were counted as Pillars or Bulwarks whose presence in Jerusalem kept the city safe. And remember the curious business with James and John being christened "Boanerges," taken to mean "sons of thunder," but (with John Allegro) more likely representing the Sumerian Geshpuanur (the prefix becoming a suffix as is common in Near Eastern names), meaning "upholder of the vault of heaven," a title of one of the Dioscuri or heavenly twins (Acts 28:11). This is to make James and John at once both brothers and cosmic pillars. And since the two cosmic pillars upholding the roof of Solomon's Temple (symbolic of the firmament of the heavens, as in all ancient temples) were called Boaz and Jachin, one may wonder whether Boanerges has something to do with Boaz, James/Jacob with Jachin. Like James, John is said (by Polycrates) to have worn the priestly ephod, and this would fit the Zealot-like rebel priesthood ideology of James and Judas Thomas (Theudas).

[Solomon]

James the Just
Teacher of Righteousness

The Teacher of Righteousness is a figure found in some of the Dead sea scrolls at Qumran, most prominently in the Damascus Document (CD). This document speaks briefly of the origins of the sect, 390 years after the exile and after 20 years of 'groping' blindly for the way "God... raised for them a Teacher of Righteousness to guide them in the way of His heart" (CD 1:9-11). The Teacher claimed to have the proper of understanding of the Torah, being the one through whom God would reveal to the community ?the hidden things in which Israel had gone astray? (CD 3:12-15). He also claimed to be an inspired interpreter of the prophets, as the one ?to whom God made known all the mysteries of the words of his servants the prophets? (1QpHab 7:5).

Damascus Document
The Damascus Document is the name given to one of the works found in multiple fragments and copies in the caves at Qumran, and as such is counted amongst the Dead Sea Scrolls. The current majority view is that the scrolls are related to an Essene community based there around the first century BC.

The fragments from Qumran have been assigned the document references 4Q265-73, 5Q12, and 6Q15. Even before the Qumran discovery of the mid-20th century, this particular work had been known to scholars, through two manuscripts found during the late 19th century amongst the Cairo Genizah collection, in a room adjoining the Ben Ezra synagogue in Fustat. These fragments are housed at the Cambridge University Library with the classmarks T-S 10K6 and T-S 16.311 (other references are CDa and CDb, where "CD" stands for "Cairo Damascus"), and date from the tenth and twelfth centuries, respectively. In contrast to the fragments found at Qumran, the CD documents are largely complete, and therefore are vital for reconstructing the text.

The title of the document comes from numerous references within it to Damascus. The way this Damascus is treated in the document makes it possible that it was not a literal reference to Damascus in Syria, but to be understood either geographically for Babylon or Qumran itself. If symbolic, it is probably taking up the Biblical language found in Amos 5:27, "therefore I shall take you into exile beyond Damascus"; Damascus was part of Israel under King David, and the Damascus Document expresses an eschatalogical hope of the restoration of a Davidic monarchy.

[Bart]

It appears that you are not alone in your perspective.

-Bart

Led Astray By a Dead Sea Latrine
Opinion

Katharina Galor and J?rgen Zangenberg | Fri. Feb 16, 2007

Recently, Israeli paleopathologist Joseph Zias and American biblical scholar James Tabor claimed that primitive latrines they discovered close to the ancient city of Qumran confirm that Essenes had lived in the area. In doing so, they stepped knee-deep into the controversy about the authorship of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were discovered near Khirbet Qumran and are perhaps the most important biblical manuscripts ever found.

Zias and Tabor?s claim that Qumran was an Essene settlement was first put forth in the late 1940s, shortly after the scrolls were discovered and the Qumran architectural complex was excavated. At the time, scholars proposed that the Essene people mentioned by such ancient authors as Josephus, Philo and Pliny deserved to be recognized as the sect described in the Dead Sea Scrolls.

But in the years since, particularly after the discovery of additional manuscripts in the 1950s and ?60s, most scholars have come to agree that the scrolls reflect the religious and social ideas of various groups within ancient Judaism. A number of archeologists have raised serious doubts about the theory that the sect that wrote, copied and collected the scrolls built and used the archaeological complex at Qumran as its communal base.

According to Tabor and Zias, however, the primitive latrines they discovered connect Qumran to the Dead Sea Scrolls and give direct evidence of Essene culture at the site. While Tabor and Zias certainly are to be congratulated for their finds, their interpretation of the material raises severe doubts about their claims.

To begin with, Tabor and Zias fail to show why the latrines should be exclusively linked to the Essenes. They point to passages in two Dead Sea Scrolls that speak about the latrines being located in a place to the ?northwest of the city? and ?not visible from the city.? Why, though, should we think that the city mentioned in these texts represents Essene Qumran?

Tabor and Zias?s reasoning works only if a firm connection among Essenes, Qumran texts and architectural complex is already accepted before the archaeological material is analyzed. Not only does this assumption not prove anything, but it itself is in need of proof, as well.

The second problem with their claim is topography. The fact that they found installations such as latrines to the northwest of Qumran is not all that surprising, because the flat surface north and west of the site represents the only spot where any such structure could have been built. How, then, can the location be an argument in favor of the installation?s Essene origin?

In addition, according to some there was also a latrine located inside the settlement. Zias himself has written about its contents. He should be more than capable, therefore, of explaining how an indoor latrine can be reconciled with the Dead Sea Scroll texts that he quotes to identify the new discovery outside town as Essene, as well as with assumptions about the Qumranites? extreme obsession with ritual purity.

Furthermore, Tabor and Zias fail to show that the latrine is indeed ancient. Instead of simply presenting a scientifically based date of the feces remains ? which would be easy, given the fact that we are dealing here with organic material ? we are told only that it cannot be Bedouin because Bedouin usually do not bury their waste. Strange logic, indeed.

Even if the new toilet was not Bedouin, it does not follow that it was Essene. Without physical data, the ancient date of the open-air latrine is up in the air. Tabor and Zias?s attempt to connect their findings from the latrine with material from the cemetery at Qumran is equally unconvincing. While Zias has indeed done previous work on the Qumran cemetery, he is not sufficiently familiar with the bone material itself to conclude, as he did recently, that ?the graveyard at Qumran is the unhealthiest group that I have ever studied in over 30 years.?

A large part of the human bone material excavated at Qumran in the 1950s by French priest Roland de Vaux has recently been re-examined and republished by two teams, one led by German anthropologist Olav R?hrer-Ertl and the other by American paleoanthropologist Susan Sheridan. Both scholars explicitly warn against generalizing anthropological data from the Qumran cemetery, because fewer than 50 individuals have been properly examined from well over 1,100 burials.

Zias should know that the statistical value of the material is insignificant and does not allow for drawing conclusions about the mortality rate and general health of the Qumran population. Contrary to Zias?s claim, R?hrer-Ertl and Sheridan have not noted any unusual and surprising characteristics when examining the Qumran bones. The data show a surprisingly wide range of age, including several individuals aged 50 and older, and include both men and women.

On what basis, then, does Zias ignore these data? Zias and Tabor?s hypotheses about the Qumranites? rigorous latrine and purification practices and an exceptionally high mortality rate are completely unfounded.

Zias and Tabor have demonstrated clearly how much the individuals responsible for the feces in the outdoor latrine suffered from all sorts of parasites. But they fail to show how this phenomenon can be exclusively connected to the Essenes. Moreover, the assumption that the users of the new toilet were of particularly poor health can be made only when the material is carefully compared with data from other sites.

If the ancient date of the organic material from the pit can indeed be established, it should be correlated not to texts of dubious relevance, but to material from other latrines in the region and beyond. Indeed, it is for such comparisons that Zias and Tabor?s fascinating discovery holds potential.

As happens often when it comes to Qumran archaeology, this newly discovered material has been misused as ?proof? of the alleged Essene character of the site before it has been properly analyzed and compared. As much as Zias and Tabor should be lauded for their find, the pests from the pit do not prove that Essenes lived at Qumran.

Katharina Galor is a visiting assistant professor at the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World and at the Judaic studies program at Brown University. J?rgen Zangenberg is a professor of New Testament and early Christian literature at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands.

http://www.forward.com/articles/led-astray-by-a-dead-sea-latrine/

[Solomon]

Bart: I think we may expect this story to run and run.

A deceptively-simple account of an excavation of nothing more than a mundanity - latrines - and yet...

There are so many aspects to this site.

The baths, for example of another mundane feature. Ritual bathing was an essential part of Essene life, so it became an issue of major contention.

The burials, the excavation of which are a common task of an archaeologist. Here, there have become a battle ground.

It used to be that the main issue of contention was the dating of coins. Roland de Vaux, the priest mentioned in the above post, made a fundamental error in interpretation (the terminus post quem logic).

Personally, I am not very concerned with Qumran vis-?-vis the Dead Sea Scrolls and events surrounding the Jewish Revolts. The two need not be connected directly. The coins provide a good indication of who was around and when, and other than that, I am content to study the scrolls and their interpretations without much reference to this archaeological site.

That said, I agree with Eisenman (et al) that the Essenes probably referred to Qumran as Damascus.

Solomon

[Bart]

Take Claims About Dead Sea Scrolls With a Grain of Salt

Opinion - a summary of the current prevailing views

Apr 13, 2007

Once again, controversy is brewing over the famous Dead Sea Scrolls.

   After widely publicized showings in Seattle and in other cities, the largest Scrolls exhibit ever is scheduled to open soon at the San Diego Natural History Museum. A sophisticated media campaign has accompanied all the current exhibits, aimed at convincing the public of the truth of an old, and now increasingly disputed, theory of the Scrolls? origins ? namely, that they were written by Essenes living at the ancient site near the Dead Sea known as Khirbet Qumran.

   The media campaign is but the latest instance of a half-century of scholarly disregard for ancient Judaic culture. Like the recently propagated claim that ossuary coffins found in a Jerusalem crypt contain the remains of the family of Jesus of Nazareth and of Jesus himself, the traditional theory of the Scrolls? origins is based not on scientific research per se, but rather on conjecture and a tendentious presentation of evidence ? techniques feeding on a largely faith-based fascination with Christian origins.

   Those who saw and studied the first of the Scrolls, circa 1948-1952, too quickly surmised that they had been written not by the Palestinian Jews at large but rather by the small, pietist Essenic sect, which represented only a minuscule portion of that population. The Qumran site, close to the 11 Scroll caves that stretched northward from that area, was soon thereafter arbitrarily identified as the home of this group.

   A Christological element was then brought into the picture, and the resulting theory has found massive public acceptance, involving as it did claims that the desert home of the Essenes had been located and that its inhabitants in particular had helped fashion early Christian ideas. Father Roland de Vaux, the first editor in chief of the Scrolls publication project, and himself a Dominican monk, championed the theory and called Qumran an ?Essene monastery.?

   The later emergence of new text evidence ? such as the famous Copper Scroll, which contains an inventory of buried artifacts and treasures of the Jerusalem Temple, and is still called a ?mystery? by traditional Scrolls scholars ? basically did nothing to change the interpretation of these manuscripts. The Qumran-Essene hunch quickly became the dominant theory, coloring virtually all researchers? efforts to understand the Scrolls.

   During the past two decades, however, scholars have increasingly come to see that the totality of evidence now favors an entirely different view: that the Scrolls were the writings of various Palestinian groups and individuals, and that a pressing historical cause ? the impending Roman siege on Jerusalem of 70 C.E. ? was responsible for their sequestration in desert caves.

   The latest support for these conclusions comes from archaeologists at the Israel Antiquities Authority, who after 10 seasons of systematic excavations at Qumran ? excavations that revealed an entirely secular settlement devoted to the manufacture of pottery ? have concluded in detailed studies published in the United States and Israel that Qumran was not the home of a sect and that the Scrolls could have come only from Jerusalem and its vicinity.

   The dispassionate investigation of the texts, as of the nearby archaeological site, has thus opened the way to a new understanding of Jewish thought and experience at a crucial moment in the history of this people. But traditional Scroll scholars, deeply committed in their writings to a theory created prematurely and in haste, have continued to assert their belief in that old idea.

   Concomitantly, a phenomenon of great concern has developed, involving initiatives aimed at creating an apologetic defense of the old theory so as to secure its acceptance by the general public.

   One example is the recent disingenuous claim ? rebutted on this page in February by Katharina Galor and J?rgen Zangenberg ? that the discovery of fecal remains near Qumran proves that Essenes really lived there.

   Another is a widely publicized DNA project announced in 1995, the results of which have been suppressed.

   And yet another is a dramatic 1997 Israel Museum press release stating that a newly unearthed ostracon mentioning Jericho ?constitutes the first archaeological proof? that a connection exists between the Qumran site and the Scrolls found in nearby caves? ? a claim based on the erroneous reading of a single word whose magnification subsequently proved that the ostracon had nothing to do with Essenes or Qumran.

   To this list can be added the current Scroll exhibitions. The recommended reading lists accompanying these exhibits exclude all publications by scholars who are of the view that the Scrolls are of Jerusalem origin. Indeed, no archaeologist associated with this interpretation has been invited to lecture at these venues. The exhibits themselves, once compared with the actual findings as known today, demonstrably mislead the public.

   What these efforts and others similar to them share is a fundamental, and inappropriate, disregard for ancient Judaic culture. The complex history of the Palestinian Jews on the eve of the First Revolt is being pushed aside in favor of a bizarre, Christologically colored thesis. The fervently expressed ?tomb of Jesus? belief, portrayed in a self-styled documentary featuring costumed actors, is but a spillover of the same phenomenon.

   Current seductive exhibitions and other efforts to the contrary, the Scrolls have, since their forced publication, been revealing many new aspects of the Jewish experience before Jerusalem burned and the Temple priesthood forever lost its power. Let us hope that the sectarian fallacy of the past half-century will ultimately be set aside, and that scholars and the public will come to focus on a profound and decisive moment in the Jewish past.

   Norman Golb teaches Jewish history and civilization at the University of Chicago?s Oriental Institute. He is the author of ?Who Wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls?: The Search for the Secret of Qumran? (Scribner, 1996).

http://www.forward.com/articles/take-claims-about-dead-sea-scrolls-with-a-grain-of/

[Solomon]

I admire the work of Norman Golb, who is an active participant in the debates surrounding the Dead Sea Scrolls. The above summary is therefore not a detached, objective study, but an exposition of his position.

In that regard, I am probably in a better position to offer a summary.

My interest in the subject began some forty years ago. I wanted to know if the scrolls could offer a non-biblical perspective on the NT Jesus. The question that occupied me - and most probably, very many others - was to discover some historical basis for this religious figure. That question is now answered to my satisfaction (a clear and resounding 'no' to his historicity).

This question was impossible to answer for decades, because study of the scrolls was controlled exclusively by the Roman Catholic order responsible for the Inquisition. As events proved, the interest of this group was not to offer a purely academic study, but to protect its dogma.

This religious order used its exclusive control of access to the scrolls to manipulate academic study and, through this, academic progress and careers. It defended its position by lies, obfuscation and bitter personal attacks on any who challenged its authority.

The Roland de Vaux mentioned is P?re Roland de Vaux, a French Dominican priest who headed the ?cole Biblique in Jerusalem. He was editor-in-chief of the Dead Sea Scrolls from 1953-71.

The stranglehold of the Catholic church was broken very largely by the strenuous efforts of one man, Robert Eisenman. In my view, his studies offer a near-definitive understanding of how the scrolls relate to the history of the Jews in the period leading up the First Jewish Revolt.

This is the period in which the NT Jesus figure is supposed to have existed. This is, as I mentioned, above, where my interest was focused. It has little to do with Qumran.

The authorship question is complex. Did all the scrolls originate from one place? If that place was a library, in Jerusalem, say, did they serve a single purpose? If some or all belonged to the Essenes, who were they?

First then, let us look at what we are discussing: the scrolls.

The Qumran Library
The scrolls and scroll fragments recovered in the Qumran environs represent a voluminous body of Jewish documents, a veritable "library", dating from the third century B.C.E. to 68 C.E. Unquestionably, the "library," which is the greatest manuscript find of the twentieth century, demonstrates the rich literary activity of Second Temple Period Jewry and sheds insight into centuries pivotal to both Judaism and Christianity. The library contains some books or works in a large number of copies, yet others are represented only fragmentarily by mere scraps of parchment. There are tens of thousands of scroll fragments. The number of different compositions represented is almost one thousand, and they are written in three different languages: Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek.

There is less agreement on the specifics of what the Qumran library contains. According to many scholars, the chief categories represented among the Dead Sea Scrolls are:

Biblical
Those works contained in the Hebrew Bible. All of the books of the Bible are represented in the Dead Sea Scroll collection except Esther.

Apocryphal or pseudepigraphical
Those works which are omitted from various canons of the Bible and included in others.

Sectarian
Those scrolls related to a pietistic commune and include ordinances, biblical commentaries, apocalyptic visions, and liturgical works.

While the group producing the sectarian scrolls is believed by many to be the Essenes, there are other scholars who state that there is too little evidence to support the view that one sect produced all of the sectarian material. Also, there are scholars who believe there is a fourth category of scroll materials which is neither biblical, apocryphal, nor "sectarian." In their view, such scrolls, which may include "Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice", should be designated simply as contemporary Jewish writing.

It is the sectarian content, authored by one or more communities, that relates to the question of Qumran. Simply: did a community - possibly Essene - author the community portion of the scrolls and live at Qumran?

Though I think it most likely that the answer to both parts of the question is 'yes', my understanding of the content does not depend on this in any manner.

There can be no doubt that some of the sectarian content is community-based.

The Community Rule
Serekh ha-Yahad

4Q258 (Sd)
Parchment
Copied late first century B.C.E. - early first century C.E.

Originally known as The Manual of Discipline, the Community Rule contains a set of regulations ordering the life of the members of the "yahad," the group within the Judean Desert sect who chose to live communally and whose members accepted strict rules of conduct. This fragment cites the admonitions and punishments to be imposed on violators of the rules, the method of joining the group, the relations between the members, their way of life, and their beliefs. The sect divided humanity between the righteous and the wicked and asserted that human nature and everything that happens in the world are irrevocably predestined. The scroll ends with songs of praise to God.

A complete copy of the scroll, eleven columns in length, was found in Cave 1. Ten fragmentary copies were recovered in Cave 4, and a small section was found in Cave 5. The large number of manuscript copies attests to the importance of this text for the sect. This particular fragment is the longest of the versions of this text found in Cave 4.

Reference
Qumran, E. "A Preliminary Publication of 4QSd Columns VII-VIII" (in Hebrew). Tarbiz 60 (1991):435-37.

Damascus Document
Brit Damesek

4Q271(Df)
Parchment
Copied late first century B.C.E.

The Damascus Document is a collection of rules and instructions reflecting the practices of a sectarian community. It includes two elements. The first is an admonition that implores the congregation to remain faithful to the covenant of those who retreated from Judea to the "Land of Damascus." The second lists statutes dealing with vows and oaths, the tribunal, witnesses and judges, purification of water, Sabbath laws, and ritual cleanliness. The right-hand margin is incomplete. The left-hand margin was sewn to another piece of parchment, as evidenced by the remaining stitches.

In 1896, noted Talmud scholar and educator Solomon Schechter discovered sectarian compositions which later were found to be medieval versions of the Damascus Document. Schechter's find in a synagogue storeroom near Cairo, almost fifty years before the Qumran discoveries, may be regarded as the true starting point of modern scroll research.


References
1. Baumgarten, J. "The Laws of the Damascus Document in Current Research." In The Damascus Document Reconsidered. Edited by M. Broshi. Jerusalem, 1992. Written by Baltimore Hebrew University scholar Joseph Baumgarten, this 1992 imprint includes an analysis of the Damascus Document and its relation to Jewish Law, or halakhah.

2. Rabin, C. The Zadokite Documents. Oxford, 1958.

3. Schechter, S. Fragments of a Zadokite Work: Documents of Jewish Sectaries, vol. 1. Cambridge, England, 1910.

That there was a community and that the scrolls contain some of their works there should be no doubt.

I will not digress here and now into an examination of the content. I will just mention that the attempts to make the scrolls appear to be irrelevant to the study of early Christianity have failed.


Testimonia
4QTestimonia (or Messianic Anthology, 4Q175 [4QTest])

Testimonia was found in Cave Four near the site of Khirbet Qumran near the shores of the Dead Sea in the early 1950's. It is a short document, complete except for a piece missing in the lower right corner. The name "Testimonia" comes from an early type of Christian writing, which it resembles in literary style. The Christian Testimonia was a collection of verses from the Bible about the messiah, strung together to prove some kind of point. Verses used like this are usually called "proof-texts." The Testimonia from Qumran is not a Christian document, but does resemble the early Christian Testimonia because of its use of a number of verses dealing with a theme.

The Qumran text includes five biblical quotations connected by interpretation. The first two quotations refer to the raising up of a prophet like Moses. The third quotation refers to a royal Messiah, the fourth to a priestly Messiah. The quotation from Joshua is connected to the coming of a time of great disaster, brought on by those dedicated to evil. The manuscript is usually dated to the middle of the first century B.C.E.

Photograph by Bruce and Kenneth Zuckerman, West Semitic Research, in collaboration with the Princeton Theological Seminary. Courtesy Department of Antiquities, Jordan.

Commentary by Marilyn J. Lundberg.


The War Rule
Serekh ha-Milhamah

4Q285 (SM)
Parchment
Copied early first century C.E.
Height 4 cm (1 1/2 in.), length 5 cm (2 in.)
Courtesy of the Israel Antiquities Authority (12)
This six-line fragment, commonly referred to as the "Pierced Messiah" text, is written in a Herodian script of the first half of the first century C.E. and refers to a Messiah from the Branch of David, to a judgment, and to a killing.
Hebrew is comprised primarily of consonants; vowels must be supplied by the reader. The appropriate vowels depend on the context. Thus, the text (line 4) may be translated as "and the Prince of the Congregation, the Branch of David, will kill him," or alternately read as "and they killed the Prince." Because of the second reading, the text was dubbed the "Pierced Messiah." The transcription and translation presented here support the "killing Messiah" interpretation, alluding to a triumphant Messiah (Isaiah 11:4).

In September 1992, "Time Magazine" published an article on the War Rule fragment displayed here (object no. 12) exploring the differing interpretations. A "piercing messiah" reading would support the traditional Jewish view of a triumphant messiah. If, on the other hand, the fragment were interpreted as speaking of a "pierced messiah," it would anticipate the New Testament view of the preordained death of the messiah. The scholarly basis for these differing interpretations--but not their theological ramifications--are reviewed in "A Pierced or Piercing Messiah?"


References
1. Vermes, G. "The Oxford Forum for Qumran Research: Seminar on the Rule of the War from Cave 4 (4Q285)," Journal of Jewish Studies 43 (Spring 1992):85-90.

2. Richard N. Ostling Is Jesus in the Dead Sea Scrolls? Time (September 21, 1992) Unbound serial. Hebraic Section, African and Middle Eastern Division, Library of Congress.

3. James D. Tabor A Pierced or Piercing Messiah? -- The Verdict is Still Out Biblical Archaeology Review 18 (November - December 1992) Unbound serial. Hebraic Section, African and Middle Eastern Division, Library of Congress.

Date and contents
According to carbon dating, textual analysis, and handwriting analysis the documents were written at various times between the middle of the 2nd century BCE and the 1st century CE. At least one document has a carbon date range of 21 BCE ?61 CE.

The fragments span at least 801 texts that represent many diverse viewpoints, ranging from beliefs resembling those of the Essenes to those of other sects. About 30% are fragments from the Hebrew Bible, from all the books except the Book of Esther and the Book of Nehemiah (Abegg et al 2002). About 25% are traditional Israelite religious texts that are not in the canonical Hebrew Bible, such as the Book of Enoch, the Book of Jubilees, and the Testament of Levi. Another 30% contain Biblical commentaries or other texts such as the Community Rule (1QS/4QSa-j, also known as "Discipline Scroll" or "Manual of Discipline"), The Rule of the Congregation, The Rule of the Blessing and the War of the Sons of Light Against the Sons of Darkness (1QM, also known as the "War Scroll") related to the beliefs, regulations, and membership requirements of a Jewish sect, which some researchers continue to believe lived in the Qumran area. The rest of the fragments (about 15%) remain unidentified.

It is difficult for the layman to gain an independent and authoritative view of the scrolls. Many, if not most of the scholars hold religious views and most come to the subject with either a degree of prejudice, or at least a preset point of view which tends to act like a pair of blinkers. On the other hand, I think that it is necessary for a good scholar of the subject to have a thorough grounding in both Judaism and Jewish history of the period.

Solomon

[Diving Doc]

Solomon,
This man Dr. Robert H. Eisenman Is truly remarkable. Thanks for all your efforts.

Dr. Robert H. Eisenman is a Professor of Middle East Religions and Archaeology and Director of the Institute for the Study of Judeo-Christian Origins at California State University, Long Beach; and Visiting Senior Member of Linacre College, Oxford University. The consultant to the Huntington Library in its decision to free the Dead Sea scrolls, he was the leading figure in the worldwide campaign to gain access to the scrolls. A National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow at the Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem, he was a Senior Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Postgraduate Hebrew Studies.

He is most famous for having completed a translation of the Dead Sea Scrolls in only 6 months, and for his radical understanding of the early Christian community as one imitating the Nasoreans, who still exist today as the priests of the Mandaeans. His theory that John the Baptist did not recognise or authorise the mission of Jesus backs up the history of the Mandaeans - though he did not refer to them specifically in his work - and explains many historical anomalies.

[edit] Books

    * The Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered (with Michael Wise), 1992, ISBN 1852303689
    * James the Brother of Jesus: The Key to Unlocking the Secrets of early Christianity and the Dead Sea Scrolls. New York: Viking, 1997, ISBN 1842930265
    * The New Testament Code: The Cup of the Lord, the Damascus Covenant, and the Blood of Christ, 2006, Duncan Baird Publishers / Watkins, ISBN 1842931865.

[Solomon]

You're welcome, Doc. My first conclusion, that the NT Jesus was not an historical figure, was reached after maybe two decades of study; understanding how the mythic figure was assembled, the next decade; and now I endeavour to understand how the Christian church came about.

The achievement of Eisenman in freeing the scrolls was herculean. His grasp of the subject is second to none and his elucidations, brilliant.

I keep on my desk: The Dead Sea Scrolls and the First Christians. Essays and Translations. Robert Eisenman (1996).

I also recommend:
James the Brother of Jesus: The Key to Unlocking the Secrets of Early Christianity and the Dead Sea Scrolls, by Robert Eisenman (ISBN: 0670869325)

His most recent is The New Testament Code: The Cup of The Lord, the Damascus Covenant and the Blood of Christ (ISBN-10: 1842931164). I have yet to read this.

Synopsis
In this long-awaited sequel to "James the Brother of Jesus", Robert Eisenman's extraordinary revelations about the leadership of the early Christian Church cast a revealing light over New Testament documents, with far-reaching implications. Eisenman presents a full examination of James's relationship to the "Dead Sea Scrolls", and in revealing the true historical James, he demonstrates how he has also discovered the true historical Jesus. This is the real history of Palestine in the first century. The author exposes the deliberate falsifications of New Testament documents, showing the almost absurd and certainly triviliazing way in which Jesus was presented in the Gospels. He describes how Peter, a prototypical Essene, was used - for example, in the Gospels and the "Book of Acts" - as a mouthpiece for anti-Semitism. He decodes many of the esoteric references in the "Scrolls" which found their way into the Gospels, and draws some dramatic conclusions from them. He also explains why the recent, almost miraculously discovered James Ossuary is a fraud. This groundbreaking work of historical detection, with its challenging revelations, will not disappoint Eisenman's many followers.

I also have copies of his early papers, published by Leiden University and later made unavailable by that institution.

Solomon

[Diving Doc]

Solomon,
The next time I am over to the UK I want to borrow some books.
Again thanks for the posting.
Cheers,
Doc

[Bart]

Virtual Qumran sheds new light on Dead Sea scrolls discovery site

18-Jun-2007

   The mysterious archaeological ruins located paces from where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered 60 years ago served first as a fortress before being adopted by Jewish religious sect, two UCLA researchers contend.

   �Qumran was established originally as a fortress, just as the archaeological evidence shows, and then it was abandoned,� said Robert R. Cargill, a UCLA graduate student in Near Eastern Culture and Languages. �It was later resettled by the Essenes, an early Jewish religious community that came from Jerusalem, bringing with them the scrolls and continuing to copy and compose new scrolls.�

   Cargill and collaborator William M. Schniedewind, chair of the UCLA Department of Near Eastern Cultures and Languages, arrived at the conclusion while building the world�s first three-dimensional computer model of the site, which has been the subject of debate since a Bedouin shepherd discovered the first scrolls in a cave above Qumran in 1947.

   �Once you put all the archaeological evidence into three dimensions, the solution literally jumps out at you,� said Schniedewind, the project�s principle investigator.

   The scholars hope their Qumran Visualization Project, slated to go on view June 29 at the San Diego Natural History Museum as part of the largest public exhibition of the scrolls ever mounted, will resolve the conflict surrounding the history and evolution of the West Bank site.

   Generations of scholars have clashed over whether Qumran served exclusively as a monastery for the scholarly and pacifist Essenes; a fortress for the mighty Hasmoneans, whose victory against ancient Greek occupiers is celebrated during Hanukkah; or a rich Jerusalem family�s villa that was later adapted by the Essenes as a Jewish communal compound.

   With the judiciousness of Solomon, Cargill and Schniedewind cut the three competing theories down the middle, contending that none of them hold together without elements from the others.

   �We felt it was of the utmost important to allow the archaeological remains to speak for themselves,� said Schniedewind. �So we decided to follow the evidence in modeling the site, no matter where it would lead. In attempting to reconstruct many of the suggestions made by scholars over the years, we found that many were simply not possible architecturally. But when half of the elements were taken from each of the competing theories and added to each other, the most plausible � and buildable � explanation emerged.�

   Cargill and Schniedewind contend that the original 20,150-square-foot, two-story structure, which has a four-story tower and surrounds a 3,229-square-foot courtyard, could not have been built originally as the home of a sectarian religious community, as Roland de Vaux, a French Dominican priest who led the original excavation of the site, held. De Vaux maintained that the original occupants, who refer to themselves in the scrolls as the �Yahad,� were the Essenes.

   Central to de Vaux�s theory is the existence of a communal dining hall, which was vividly described in the scrolls. While early excavations indeed discovered enough pottery to feed a religious community, the dining room was not part of the original structure, the UCLA researchers contend.

   �Once we put the dining hall into the model, we realized it had to be an addition,� Cargill said. �It only fits to the south of the original structure.�

   When the site served as a fortress, housing fewer people than the Jewish religious settlement, residents would have eaten elsewhere, possibly in a central courtyard where ovens have been excavated, the UCLA team contends.

   Similarly, 1,120-square-foot, two-story scriptorium � or large work room for producing scrolls � has long been thought to be central to the religious community, but the position of the room and thickness of the walls are more consistent with an addition than an original feature of the structure, the UCLA team found.

   But if Qumran does not appear to have been originally designed for communal life, its evolution is not consistent with use exclusively as a fortress either, say the UCLA researchers. In an influential 1996 article about Qumran, University of Chicago professor Norman Golb argued that the site, occupied from about 163 B.C. to A.D. 73, was always a fortress.

   While original features of the structure, such as a defensive four-story tower on one side and protective precipices on two opposing sides, would be expected of a fortress, the array of outbuildings and additions reflect a more pastoral, contemplative life, the UCLA team found. For instance, the researchers have been able to bring to life a vast water system that flowed through the site, filling 10 ritual baths, separating clay for pottery production, and sustaining residents, livestock and crops. Moreover, only a low wall appears to have protected agricultural portions of the compound�s northwest side �not the heavy fortification that would be expected of a fortress.

   �The Qumran model shows that the nature of the expanded areas, specifically those in the northwest annex and within an inner courtyard, was of a communal, non-military nature,� said Schniedewind, who participated in an archaeological dig at Qumran over a decade ago.

   Cargill and Schniedewind credit French archaeologist Jean-Baptiste Humbert with first suggesting the hybrid approach that inspires their own �synthetic� theory. Humbert contended in a 2002 book that Qumran was first built as a home, possibly a vacation home, for a wealthy Jerusalem family before being abandoned and reoccupied in the late first century B.C. Like Cargill and Schniedewind, Humbert has contended that the site�s eventual occupants were the Essenes.

   �This interpretation was a crucial step in the right direction,� Cargill said. �But the shared rooms � the dining room, the scriptorium, the pottery works � appear to have been built for a community of people. This isn�t just for one wealthy family out in the desert. This is an entire community center [whose residents] sustained themselves making pottery and may have even fed themselves from their own crops.�

   Like many scholars before them, Cargill and Schniedewind believe the Essenes, who practiced communal ownership, brought all of their possessions to the site, including about 70 percent of the scrolls discovered in the area. They believe that the Essenes are the Yahad group described in the remaining 30 percent of the recovered scrolls, and that they are the authors of those texts, composed at Qumran, which describe communal life in the Judean desert. The UCLA team theorizes that the Essenes may have anticipated an attack from Roman soldiers when they packed the scrolls in earthenware jars and hid them in caves in the hills above Qumran.

###
The Qumran Visualization Project will be on view at the San Diego Natural History Museum through January 2008 as part of �Dead Sea Scrolls,� the largest, longest and most comprehensive exhibit of its kind in any country. In all, 27 scrolls will be on view, 10 of which have never been publicly displayed. To this day, the Dead Sea Scrolls contain the oldest known manuscript of the Old Testament ever found.

   The computer model was built over the course of 15 months using MultiGen Creator, a powerful modeling tool known for producing fully interactive real-time models. Photographs of wood grains, plasters and soil at Qumran and other similar sites throughout the Middle East provide the model�s texture. The model includes virtual recreations of oil lights, ink wells, pottery and other actual artifacts discovered throughout Qumran.

   A series of high-resolution panoramic photographs of the sky, the cliffs to the west of the site, the Dead Sea and the plains of Jordan to the east were grafted together in Photoshop to illustrate Qumran�s surroundings. The project�s architects eventually plan to replace the panoramic photography with satellite imagery, which will allow them to virtually simulate the surrounding topography and terrain. Plans also call for virtual models of the caves where the scrolls were found.

Contact: Meg Sullivan


University of California - Los Angeles

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-06/uoc--vqs061807.php

[Solomon]

Quman mikvah (ritual bath). The steps show earthquake damage.
Josephus describes how the Essenes purified themselves through immersion before participating in their communal meals:
    "Then, after working without interruption until the fifth hour, they reassemble in the same place and, girded with linen loin cloths, bathe themselves thus in cold water. After this purification they assemble in a special building to which no one is admitted who is not of the same faith; they themselves only enter the refectory if they are pure, as though into a holy precinct" (War 2:129).

For instance, the researchers have been able to bring to life a vast water system that flowed through the site, filling 10 ritual baths, separating clay for pottery production, and sustaining residents, livestock and crops.

This is archaeological evidence that is difficult to deny. It lends much weight to Essene occupation. It convinces me.

Solomon

[Bart]

Warriors Once Occupied Dead Sea Scrolls Site

By Heather Whipps, Special to LiveScience

posted: 12 July 2007 10:18 am ET

   Fierce warriors once occupied the famous complex where the Dead Sea Scrolls were written, new research suggests.

   Ruins of the Qumran site�in the present-day West Bank�resemble a monastery, but scholars have argued over its uses before the religious sect who penned the scrolls moved in somewhere between 130 and 100 B.C.

   Using the world's first virtual 3-D reconstruction of the site, historians recently found evidence of a fortress that was later converted into its more peaceful, pious function.

   �Once you put all the archaeological evidence into three dimensions, the solution literally jumps out at you,� said William Schniedewind, chair of Ancient Eastern Mediterranean Studies at UCLA and the project�s principle investigator.

Clarification in virtual reality

   The Qumran gained legendary status in the archaeological world when a shepherd boy discovered the Dead Sea Scrolls in nearby caves in 1947.

   After many investigations of the 20,000-square-foot residential complex where most of the scrolls are believed to have been written, archaeologists have debated the structural mish-mash of its buildings and spaces. Many, such as a defensive four-story tower, don't seem to belong to a setting used exclusively as a monastery. Other areas appeared as add-ons or renovations, such as a communal dining hall.

   With the 3-D model, the UCLA researchers deconstructed the complex piece by piece. That allowed them to "see" architectural elements invisible to the naked eye, said Schniedewind.

   "The various sizes of the walls and their ability to support weight (e.g., necessary for multi-story construction/fortification) was not immediately clear in the archaeological plan," he said.

   �Once we put the dining hall into the model, we realized it had to be an addition,� noted UCLA graduate student and project co-author Bob Cargill. �It only fits to the south of the original structure.�

   Add-ons like the dining hall were all rooms meant for communal living, while the underbelly of the structure�-built first and revealed in the virtual model�-had more militaristic functions, the researchers found.

   During its period as a fort, the first extended occupation of Qumran was probably by a band of mighty warriors called the Hasmoneans, whose victory over Greek occupiers is celebrated during Hanukkah, the UCLA historians contend.

Monks sought peace in the desert

   It is widely believed that the Dead Sea Scrolls, the only surviving texts of the Hebrew Bible (or Old Testament) written before 100 A.D., were rushed from the Qumran compound and hidden in the caves during an encroachment of Roman troops in 66 A.D.

   Before the attack, the Qumran was a peaceful place of worship where the Essenes, a strict religious group who moved there from Jerusalem, painstakingly copied and scribed the scrolls.

   "The site was chosen because the wilderness was a place that people went to seek God--indeed, this was the reason that the Dead Sea Scrolls give for choosing a desert site for this settlement," Schniedewind told LiveScience. Essene monks observed a regimented life of ritual while they lived at the Qumran.

   The new findings support the theory that the building had at least a few occupants prior to the Essenes, among them�some historians have suggested�an aristocratic family from Jerusalem who used the building as a vacation home. It makes sense, said Schniedewind, given the limit of practical places to live in that part of the world.

   "There are very few possible places that could be settled in the Judean desert. So, everyone who settles there tends to choose the same places," Schniedewind said. "Specifically, there are very few viable water sources. The site of Qumran ... allowed the collection of runoff using dams, aqueducts and pools."

http://www.livescience.com/history/070712_scrolls_site.html

[Diving Doc]

Excellent Post Bart.

I thoroughly enjoyed that and learned something as well.

Cheers,
Doc

[Charles Gadda]

I have just now read your various posts and I would like to submit a few comments:

(1) "Ten" ritual baths: the problem with this, is that there is no concrete evidence that more than one or two of the water cisterns were in fact used as mikvot rather than for pottery manufacture and simply for saving water.  There were of course many mikvot in Jerusalem as well, but no one has concluded that the people using them were Essenes--although there were no doubt Essenes living there (as one of the gates of the city was called the Gate of the Essenes).  The key point here is that if you want to think Essenes were living at Qumran, then you will interpret the cisterns as baths, but if you are unconvinced by the Essene hypothesis, you will probably see most of them as something else.  Always be suspicious of the news items, the journalists are simply repeating what they have been told by scholars who are putting a spin on the facts.

The DNA, the "toilet" scam and other claims are dealt with by Norman Golb in his "Recent Strategies" article at www.oi.uchicago.edu/research/projects/scr/Recent_Strategies_2007.pdf

See also Golb's article "Fact and Fiction in Current Exhibitions of the Dead Sea Scrolls," at www.oi.uchicago.edu/pdf/dss_fact_fiction_2007.pdf

(2) The "virtual reality" film: Schniedewind and his UCLA grad student Robert Cargill have simply lifted this fortress evidence from work by a series of scholars and presented it as their own "finding."

Thus, Dr. Yizhar Hirschfeld's book Qumran in Context (2004) explains at length that the site was originally a fortress (see especially Chapter 3, pp. 49-182). The book provides two technically correct, original drawings of the tower and rectangular building attached to it, first as they existed during the Hasmonean period (p. 86) and then with a new extension of the Herodian period (p. 113). Hirschfeld, a professional archaeologist, did not need to use "virtual 3-D reconstruction" to do his work and reveal that Qumran was built as a fortress.

Furthermore, the leaders of the official Israel Antiquities Authority Qumran team, Dr. Yitzhak Magen and Dr. Yuval Peleg, also clearly state that Qumran was a Hasmonean fortress "responsible for the security of the Dead Sea shore" (See their report in The Site of the Dead Sea Scrolls: Archaeological Interpretations and Debates [2006], pp. 102 ff.).

And as everyone knows, Norman Golb has been arguing that Qumran was a fortress since at least 1980.

What Schniedewind cannot bring himself to frankly acknowledge, is that after ten years of reexamining Qumran, none of the archaeologists have been able to find any evidence that the site was ever inhabited by a sect, or that scribal activity ever took place there.  In particular, they now believe there was never a so-called "scriptorium" there.  Inkwells have in fact been found in many ancient sites in Israel and Jordan, without copying of literary scrolls being deduced therefrom.  Yet, Schniedewind continues to refer to the Qumran "scriptorium."  Are we supposed to assume that his 3-D computer program enabled him to reveal that the archaeologists are wrong?

So I ask: why is Dr. Schniedewind stepping in now and trying to steal the credit due to these scholars, who have refuted fifty years of research, but who, unlike him, have been excluded from participating in the lecture series accompanying the San Diego exhibit of the scrolls where his film is being shown? Apparently this specialist in biblical exegesis (who is by no means a "historian") has decided to rehash the findings of several prominent Israeli archaeologists and present it, through a sensationalist press campaign, as his own discovery, without explaining that his true aim is to reconcile those findings with the Qumran-Essene theory that these same Israeli archaeologists, following Golb, have rejected.

For further details, see my pieces http://www.nowpublic.com/warriors_occupied_qumran_scrolls_battle_continues
and
http://www.nowpublic.com/dead_sea_scrolls_qumran_fortress_team_responds_criticism
and the references provided in them.

On the controversy surrounding the current San Diego exhibit, see also my pieces
http://www.nowpublic.com/dead_sea_scrolls_exhibit_misleads_public
and
http://www.nowpublic.com/dead_sea_scrolls_san_diego_natural_history_museum_update

[Bart]

Thank you Charles for expanding the discussion with those links. It seems to me that the display was designed to appeal to the mass audience of the current culture and not the serious student and follower of the Scrolls saga. Is it wrong?, is it misleading? Yes it is that and many more things. Like society, which has its different levels and layers of scholarly depth, museums apparently believe they must appeal to the greatest mass es in order to attract the greatest number of viewers and make the greatest number of dollars/yen/shekel/ruble, you get the idea. Is that wrong? Probably, but again it depends upon the perspective of whatever level of the culture you wish to view it from. Is that wrong? Maybe, or perhaps it is a reflection of society in general and the current cultural norm. All levels will never be satisfied with scrolls presentation is made, just as all Scrolls interpreters will never agree with each other on every point.

But to intentionally present disproven, outdated, and misleading information is unequivocally wrong. But it is seemingly a current cultural norm to accept anything, whether it be right, wrong, or indifferent within the dictates of any societal level. Societal ills can be very permeating, that is never going to change.

There is one aspect of the story which i do not understand at all, and you could perhaps shed some light upon it. what was the $6,000,000 to 'bring the exhibit' to San Diego? for? Was that the cost only for San Diego, or the entire US tour? That seems to be an extreme amount just to fly a few tiny pieces of artifacts across the sea.

Bart

[Charles Gadda]

Bart--interesting comments, thanks. 

I tend to agree with what you say (at least in an ironical sense), although I think one can (or must) still demand more in light of the recognized educational role of museums.  Since controversy sells, who's to say more people wouldn't be attracted if there were a real debate between the two groups of scholars? The curator's role should be to help make that debate interesting, exciting and intelligible, rather than cover it up.  My own hunch is that she had personal motives--namely, to curry favor with her colleagues in the Society of Biblical Literature, the directors of which happen to be violently opposed to the newer theory of the scroll origins.  "You don't want to confuse people" is undoubtedly just an excuse she came up with--what's really going on here is a lot of seedy academic politics.

As for the $6,000,000 figure, it is for the San Diego exhibit alone.  I vaguely recall having read one or another interview with the curator where she describes what they needed the money for: security, construction, etc.  But I am dubious about the whole thing.  Hava Katz, the chief curator of the Israel Antiquities Authority, has in the past been accused of accepting bribes to allow national treasures leave the country permanently (i.e. to be sold to some art dealer in New York).  This was a direct violation of Israeli law but was never prosecuted or even investigated to the best of my knowledge.  So I would not be surprised if there were illegal wheelings and dealings going on here behind the scenes.

[Bart]

Thanks Charles, I meant it in an ironic sense. The incident cannot be undone, but steps can be taken to attempt to see that it won't happen again, if one must do something. A detailed letter to the museum board of directors is the only avenue I can think of along those lines. And if the exhibit is to land elsewhere, some advance letter writing, etc., along those same lines may help prevent it from happening again.

As for the six million, something still seems way out of the norm to me. Is there any way to get a detailed account on it?

Bart

[Charles Gadda]

Bart, you are clearly right, although I fear letter-writing will have no effect either (my own letters of January to the museum, both public and private, earned me Dr. Kohn's published response in which she avoided the questions I had raised, mendaciously asserted that the exhibit's content was neutral, and falsely claimed to be a "Dead Sea Scrolls scholar").  However, I have heard that the Israeli scholars in question are furious about the matter and are taking it up with the Antiquities Authority.  Who knows if this will lead to a change in policy, it is a matter of the internal politics of that organism (whose director is a retired general and not a scholar).  But if the policy does change, I will at least have the personal satisfaction of knowning that I spoke out on the matter when dozens of newspapers were just pretending it was business as usual.

Of the $6,000,000, $100,000 were apparently handed out to graduate student Robert Cargill for his work on the virtual reality film project (he recently announced this in his wikipedia bio, saying that the money came from the museum and Steven Spielberg).  I suspect that the museum will not provide an accounting, they will be extremely secretive about the matter and only a tax audit will reveal exactly how it was spent.  When the sum of $100,000 is given to a graduate student and an entire group of major scholars are excluded from participating, something is clearly wrong.  But these are just judgment calls like any others, not so?

At any rate, the best guess I can make, is that part of the answer might lie in the involvement of an entity called The Dead Sea Scrolls Foundation.  Bear in mind how the exhibit came into being:

(1) The curator, Risa Levitt Kohn, did some of her graduate work in biblical studies under the guidance of David Noel Freedman, a traditional scrolls scholar who co-write his Ph.D. dissertation with another well-known defender of the Qumran-sectarian theory, Frank Cross (I leave aside the question of whether that in itself is ethically proper; the dissertation, which the two of them claimed to have authored together, was accepted by Johns Hopkins and they were both awarded Ph.D. degrees--I am aware of no other example of this ever having been done in any humanities department).

(2) Kohn and Freedman met with Weston Field, an archaeology fan who is apparently not a serious scholar [although he does have a Ph.D., see below] but directs this foundation I mentioned, the sole (known) aim of which is to defend and popularize the Qumran-sectarian theory of scroll origins.  Field has close contacts with Hava Katz of the IAA and uses these exhibits to make money in various ways.  The Foundation is billed as a major institution in all of the scrolls exhibits, but it appears to be simply a ramshod outfit.

(3) Kohn approached the Natural History Museum, and they agreed to host the exhibit. There is no reason to believe that the museum had the slightest understanding of the current state of scholarship, or any knowledge of where Kohn, Freeman and Field stand on this issue.

Naturally, the donors themselves (Joan and Irwin Jacobs, et al.) have had nothing to say about any of this.  The public is in a state of "awe," and that's enough for them.

Those are the basic facts and I doubt if we will ever know more.

[Bart]

Charles;

" (my own letters of January to the museum, both public and private" Just to clarify what I meant, there is a big difference between writing to the museum itself, and writing to each member of the Board of Directors. They may not be aware of anything regarding the controversy.

" something is clearly wrong.  But these are just judgment calls like any others, not so?" Something clearly seems to be wrong. Judgement calls ought not to fall into a 'clearly wrong' category. What is the mission statement of the museum itself? What is the corporate mandate, and have any laws been violated by the museum director? Those are the questions that need to be pursued, as I see it. You seem to have a very good handle on the matter so far, I hope you will continue to pursue it until you are satisfied that it was either perfectly legal or it won't happen again.

Bart

[Charles Gadda]

Bart,

First, I must correct a mistake I made above. It appears that Weston Fields does have a PhD (although I have not been able to ascertain from what institution he received it). He is said to have taught at Grace College and Theological Seminary for ten years and at the Institute of Holy Land Studies--the same Christian fundamentalist outfit where Dr. William Schniedewind (of San Diego exhibit fame) got his M.A.  What I said about the "Dead Sea Scrolls Foundation" remains true.

As for the other points you raise:

To the best of my knowledge, a complete dossier was sent to each of the members of the museum's Board of Directors a few months ago, they have simply decided to ignore the matter since the museum's media campaign is going so well.  I think they would be sensitive to a solid quantity of negative mainstream press coverage, but that simply hasn't happened yet, they are obviously very well connected with the local papers.

The museum's primary stated mission is to "educate the public," but when dealing with fine questions involving the disbursement of money, who is to say what constitutes a violation of that mandate? And so much questionable conduct doesn't violate any laws...

On the other hand, the American Association of Museums has long promulgated an "ethical transparency" standard, which certainly seems to have been violated by the actions in question--is "not wanting to confuse people" an ethically transparent explanation for giving $100,000 to a graduate student and carefully excluding the scholars whose work he is alleged to have lifted and/or distorted?--but the Association has no mechanism for enforcing the standard and such a violation wouldn't even appear to be illegal, particularly since the museum is a private institution.

Thanks for your encouragement--I do plan to pursue the matter, my main hope being that in some small measure I can contribute to a change of policy in the future.  If enough people get interested, who knows.  Compare the Scrolls monopoly in the early 1990's: it only took one person--William Moffett of the Huntington Library--to bring about its collapse, which he was led to do after reading a few letters published in a couple of newspapers, albeit by people much more important than myself.

Charles

[Bart]

Very good Charles, you are obviously very well versed in this matter. I believe that in more than a small measure you have already made a difference, regardless of the outcome of this incident. People do take notice and make reference for future conduct. I commend your tack of keeping on the high road in speaking out. Your conduct itself is a good example, you have done your best, and can rest knowing that. In the end, this may well come back and bite a few people where it really hurts, so perhaps all is not lost.

Bart

[Charles Gadda]

Thanks again for your comment.  I now have a new piece up on the Nowpublic site, I believe this time I have gone to the heart of the matter.  The link is

http://www.nowpublic.com/christian_fundamentalism_and_dead_sea_scrolls_san_diego

Best,

Charles

[Charles Gadda]

Please note that the link to my article on the Christian fundamentalist affiliations of individuals involved in the San Diego exhibit has changed, it is now http://www.nowpublic.com/node/582470

In private correspondence, I have had some interesting responses to the article.  Some readers have questioned whether the religious affiliations of scholars are relevant.  In general I would be the last person to focus on personal issues of the sort, but the circumstances here are quite unique, involving as they do the exclusion of a group of researchers, including a series of Israeli archaeologists, the chairman of the Department of Jewish Thought at the Hebrew University, and a well-known historian of Jewish antiquity who has specifically stated that the "complex history of the Palestinian Jews on the eve of the First Revolt is being pushed aside in favor of a bizarre, Christologically colored thesis."

The question that necessarily arises is whether Weston Fields (see my article for details) arranged for the scrolls to come to San Diego under the condition that the researchers in question be excluded.  This is a basic ethical issue, and I believe it fully justifies the approach I have taken in my article.  In addition, a large sum of money from Stephen Spielberg's Holocaust fund was used to produce the film being shown at the museum; one can only assume that Spielberg was not fully aware of the surrounding circumstances or of the affililations of the individuals who produced the film.

[logisticmosquito]

The East was the South; Copper scroll study.

My theory is that the second copy of this scroll relates to the book of Isaiah, and a treasure room full of hidden scrolls. When the ark went missing, it's possible the original scrolls that were in it went missing as well. I am more inclined to believe the 'treasures' in the scroll had something to do with the price men had paid to obtain original scrolls or copies people said were from original scrolls.

My theory works off many different factors; To begin with the Essenes reigned within a time the Parthian reigned. The Parthian was also in the same territory of where originals journals from the ark may have gone in 586 BC. In my view the Essenes look like they might have actually been on the lookout to find the coming savior, Isaiah's Messiah. Taking the Liberty to try and bring a close to this story perhaps. So when somebody was chosen that might have potential, perhaps they were told of this treasure room of scrolls. If a man came forward and proclaimed to be the Messiah, perhaps these caves is where his spirit was tested. It is one thing to claim it, but another to come up empty with a key to understanding God and his word.
So one man while enduring this test of spirit wrote the copper scroll. As he looked out eastward he could easily imagine himself in this treasure room, even though he sat looking to the east of his cave at the Dead Sea. So if east is the south; then the mouth of the cave he sees himself in is to the north? What are the chances that the mouth of the cave he speaks of is in the south side of the hill/mountain?

Just a thought from the little book of Skeeter.

[Fleamistress]

Hi there!

I feel as though I ran into you somewhere, but can not remember where.

I'm especially dense tonight.  Could you help and tell me of which "copper scroll" you speak?

Regards,

Cyn

[Administration]

Our article: Copper Scroll
Also this post: The Dead Sea Scrolls

This is one of the great treasure mysteries.

[logisticmosquito]

Hi there!

I feel as though I ran into you somewhere, but can not remember where.

I'm especially dense tonight.  Could you help and tell me of which "copper scroll" you speak?

Regards,

Cyn

Can't say I can remember where you might have met me! But is there any other copper scroll but the one found at the dead sea caves?